Years melt away as stranger's face recalls timeless memory

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It happened again a few weeks ago.

I saw him in a crowd, at a graduation, a boy I used to date in high school. I recognized him right away: the dark blond hair, just a little too long to be a crew cut; the thin face; the high cheekbones; the wide-set eyes. Even his clothes looked familiar: blue sportscoat, white shirt, striped tie. I started to wave to him and almost shouted, "Tom? How are you? How've you been?"

But then I realized it couldn't be Tom because Tom would be 49 or maybe even 50 by now and this Tom was just a boy, not even 18.

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The real problem is rotten parents

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It is an idea born of frustration, holding parents criminally accountable for their children's violent actions. But Mayor Ray Flynn, fed up with violence, as are we all, is advocating just that: punishing parents who fail to keep guns out of their children's hands.

Last week he ordered Boston Police Commissioner Mickey Roache to convene a task force to draft legislation that would penalize parents whose children carry guns. Should the plan win final approval, it would affect only those living within city limits.

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Neatness doesn't count when your room is full of memories

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She is upstairs cleaning her room, the 21-year-old. The new college graduate is out, out, damn spotting childhood and adolescence to make way for the working woman she has become.

Necessity has forced her to do this. She can't fit what she brought home, what she has collected in the past four years, in a room that is a storehouse for her first 17.

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Drunk drivers steal tomorrow

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Todd was playing in a yard. Kristen was jogging on a country road. Michael was driving to work. Chris was driving home from work. Lisa was getting in her car. Michelle was crossing the street. All of them children. All of them alive one minute, dead or soon to be dead the next.

Christopher Baldwin, 19, back home in Somerset after his first year of college, was rollerblading last Sunday night when he was killed. Police say a 1985 Camaro struck him from behind, pitched him onto the car's roof and hurled him into a stone wall.

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Words of love for a grown-up daughter on her graduation day

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Words of love for a grown-up daughter on her graduation day

Dear Lauren, Here it is, certainly the most important day in your life so far, and I find myself thinking in cliches - "It seems like only yesterday. Where did the time go?" - because I really don't want to think at all. I'm fine as long as I don't look back or ahead - as long as I live only this day. But this day invites reflection. You are graduating from college. You are officially grown up. You have been for a while. But now the world will know it. In a few hours you will have a diploma; you will have proof. How can I not stop at this juncture of your life and of our life together, and remember what brought us here?

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Hate speech, yes; but God, no

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Let me see if I've got this straight: I live in a country in which it's perfectly OK for college professors speaking in classrooms or graduations or anywhere else they choose, to promote hate and racism; but where clergy are warned, when they take the podium at school events, that if they say the G word they're breaking the law.

No wonder this country is so messed up.

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Thanks for all the good folks

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I love this story: A Colombian scientist who has developed the first vaccine against malaria announced last week he is refusing offers of millions of dollars from American drug companies and giving his vaccine to the world.

Dr. Manuel Elkin Patarroyo has turned over all legal rights for the vaccine to the World Health Organization. His is a selfless act in a selfish world.

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Employers must teach workers more than how to ring in a sale

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Employers must teach workers more than how to ring in a sale

It isn't news anymore, because it isn't new. It's a fact of life. Bad service is standard. Good service is rare. And it's getting rarer every day.

You walk into a store in search of a particular item and you see salespeople, but they're talking to one another. They ignore you. You wander from rack to rack - it's obvious you're looking for something - but no one comes near you. The salespeople continue to talk.

eopSo you leave. You go to another store. But it's the same there. Salespeople standing around neglecting customers.p

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Military can set an example

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Military can set an example

I read a few weeks ago that the hottest home videos these days are the X-rated kind. Absolutely normal Americans are setting up cameras and performing all kinds of sex acts for the not-so-private eye, then selling these feats of fancy so that others can observe and maybe get in the act, too.

There was no hint, of course, that this behavior might be slightly abhorrent. There was not a single syllable of moral wrestling in the piece. It was straight news. This is what people are doing.

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Two friends forever

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If I had my old high school diary, which I read and tore into a million pieces when I was in my early 20's (Why did I write only when I was miserable? And why did I write so much about boys?), I would see pages and pages of musings about Richard.

There'd be a lot of nasty stuff, I'm sure. Not because I didn't like him. I did. I do. But I was jealous of him. I didn't like that he was so important to my best friend Rosemary. I wondered whether he would be good for her and good to her, and what would happen to me if they became a permanent pair.

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The Essence of Life Lies in the Ordinary Miracle of Motherhood

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Three of the children are out in the field with their father when I arrive.

It's a Kodak moment: The girls run with their arms outstretched through spring grass under a cloudless sky, their dog loping along beside them. Tabitha's hair flies behind her like a kite's tail. Xena runs double-speed to keep up. Shiloh, 2 1/2, walks and runs, stopping every few steps to hike up her long, cotton dress…

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In Mass. you pay and pay

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In Mass. you pay and pay

I was going 75 mph in a 65 mph zone. It doesn't matter that other motorists passed me at faster speeds and didn't get caught. It doesn't matter that millions of people drive more than 10 mph over the speed limit every day. I was breaking the law and the police officer who stopped me was doing his job.

I didn't beg or cry or plead when he pulled me over, though I would have if I'd know what was going to happen. I didn't even tell him that my father had been a police officer.

"You want to hear my excuse?" I said.

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Letters and unending guilt

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Letters and unending guilt

Some are piled in a box on a table. Some sit in a black plastic tray on my desk.

I divided them when they arrived. The to-be-answered-immediately, I placed in the tray. The to-be-answered-later, I stacked in the box.

I shouldn't have put them in either place. I should have stopped what I was doing and written back right then, but I didn't for a million reasons. I was in the middle of something. I was walking out the door. I wanted to think about what to say. I wanted to write more than a quick note. Something or someone else needed my attention.

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`Family values' vs. Blue Laws

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`Family values' vs. Blue Laws

So, how long have we been listening to our politicians pontificate about "family values?"

The phrase has been on everyone's lips for the past year, but the concept has existed forever. The family - it's sacrosanct. It's the bedrock of the nation. If we could get the family back together, make it strong, then the country would follow.

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Support your local library, the jewel in every community crown

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Support your local library, the jewel in every community crown

The stamp is what did it: "Duxbury Free Library" in bold print on the first page of a book I picked up in Canton.

You can do that now. Go to one library, request a book, and have it sent to another.

The word free startled me. I hadn't seen it on a book since I was a kid borrowing from the Turner Free Library in Randolph .

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